We leave for San Diego trip Friday 3AM...(8-9 hour drive) So i'm just trying to squeezed as much pounds to lose before we hit the road. Run 5 miles this morning.

Its a short weekend trip but enough exposure we limit our expenses. Everything has been paid for except for gas. We rented a beach house with other friends, to help cut the cost & food. Our budget for this trip is $500. It was 8 years ago last time we were in San Diego..can't wait!!!

We just came back from our family trip vacation (3 days and two night trip) Universal Studio over the weekends. Kids and wife enjoyed the whole trip. My back is killing me of course, driving a total 860 miles (Sacramento to LA and back). We spent a total of $900.00 (tickets, hotels, fuel, and food, oil changed).


We have another vacation coming up late July. Though this one won't cost us as much.

In preparing for our trip to San Diego this July, I decided to take our 06 Honda Odyssey for tire rotations. Hold and behold, the guy came back and told me "by law they can't rotate the tires, because the rear tires are really bad". So I was pretty shocked because it only had 43K miles on it. These tires are rated around 60K miles. But admittedly though, I haven't really maintained the tires properly (i.e., not rotating every 7500 miles) like I'm suppose to. So i guess, I deserved it. Anyway, they give me an estimate cost of around $655.00 with lifetime free tire rotations. It was a bit high, so I went to Costco and their estimate was $30.00 lower $626.00 this includes $60 discounts.

So my wife and I discussed it on how to pay for it. We had few important parameters.

First, we didn't want to use our CC to pay for it.

Secondly, we didn't want to use our EF either to make up the difference since vacation is not considered emergency.

Thirdly, if we go over the our budget we pay using our Debit cards ONLY.

Fourthly, we didn't want to spend more than $1800 for the whole trip.

Finally, we'll pay using our $1800 stimulus check.

Knowing this, it will take some compromising, nice hotels and all the amenities, perhaps eliminating our trip to Santa Barbara altogether. I already cancelled our original hotel reservations booked online which cost around $700.00. We booked instead something more affordable and to stay within budget. That saved us few hundred bucks. Here's the new breakdown of our budget:

$1800.00 Stimulus check
- $ 588.00 Hotels/San Diego/Santa Barbara
- $ 242.00 Gas (based on total 1150 miles)
- $ 626.00 New tires
- $ 344.00 Entrance fee SeaWorld/Zoo/food/gift
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0
My Union is giving us discounts for SeaWorld and Zoo tickets @ $35.00 per ticket X 8 = $280.00 which gives us $64.00 remaining for food. I don't think that will work for us. We'll probably will be eliminating our two nights stay in Santa Barbara which we'll save us $208.00. We might end up stopping by instead for a day.

We think this is workable. What do you guys think?

It was nice to see the checking account was a bit bigger today $1800. I can now booked our family vacation down to San Diego in July. At least San Diego's economy will be boomin while we're there lol